Month: June 2019

Choices

Published on by VanessaLeave a comment

I must confess that, since I can remember, I have had this feeling that someone with superior wisdom than me, would one day come and tell me what I’m doing wrong and what I need to do better.

All my adult life I have been torn between doing what I think is suitable for me (and my family in the last thirteen years) and wondering if I am making the wrong choices. Should I be more stressed? Should I have more friends? Should I go out more? Should I push my kids more to do homework? Should I this? Should I that?

The root of these doubts is most probably fear. Fear of making the wrong choice and regretting for the rest of my life for not making the other choice, the right choice. Especially when it comes to my children and their upbringing.

Then, five years ago, Yoga came into my life and its teachings towards living a spiritual life made sense to me. I continue studying through the guidance of my teacher, Prasad Rangnekar, who patiently guides me but never tells me what to do. Still, when studying the Gita, especially about Karma Yoga, I find myself wondering if I need to change completely something in my life to live a more spiritual life. Am I in the right place? Am I in the right job? Am I in the right relationships? etc.

Luckily for me, I do have some connection with my inner self, with this gut feeling we all have. I don’t always listen to it, but since patience is also an important aspect of the practice of Yoga, I stay mostly put, I observe and I tell myself that when changes need to come, they will come by themselves. Almost naturally. There is a very important concept in the practice of Yoga (as a lifestyle, not only as a physical practice) called effortless effort, and I believe in it. The less we push, the less we fight, the clearer our mind and the more skilful choices we make.

I think I am understanding now that the principles of Karma Yoga are not encouraging us to do something different but do things differently. It is the attitude we bring to wherever we are and whatever we are doing that makes the difference. By practicing these principles, we will then live a more skilful and harmonious life. For our inner peace but also for the peace of our surroundings. It doesn’t mean that I won’t make mistakes, but I will then deal with these mistakes in a more productive way.

Maybe, I need to move away from the idea that there are right and there are wrong choices. There are choices and by cultivating a calm and clear mind I can make more skilful choices. Choices that are appropriate at the moment I take them out of the information I have. It is very possible that not everyone would make the same choice, and that is ok.

Another thing that I have been reflecting a lot about lately is that for every choice, there are consequences, and it is how we deal with them that makes the whole difference. The first one being that I didn’t choose the other(s) option(s). In addition, almost every choice has a pleasant/positive outcome and some corresponding less pleasant/positive or even directly unpleasant or negative consequences. Sometimes, these consequences are possible to foresee, sometimes, they come as a surprise. In order to live a more peaceful life, I benefit from dealing with both the positive and negative consequences of my choices instead of living in regret and guilt for not making the other choice. Fortunately, sometimes, when we realise that the consequences weren’t at all positive we can then make adjustments or even choose again. Sometimes, choices bring mistakes and all we can do is learn, change our course and move on.

Why do I write about this? Because I observe myself and people around me struggling to stay mentally and emotionally balanced with the choices we make. We decide something with what we believe is a clear mind, but we also want that thing that we didn’t choose, and we don’t want to deal with the consequences the choice we made brings. We even sometimes believe the other choice would be better, we would be happier, but still, we stay “stuck” in the choice we made in the first place. Sometimes, we can’t make the most desired choice precisely because we understand that the cons outweigh the pros, and our wants and desires stay in the way for us to skilfully deal with the choice we made. For example, I really want to go on vacation to a sunny warm place, but I also know that I have to save money. I then choose to not go on a vacation and it turns out that the weather is lousy most of the summer where I live. Would it then help me and my inner peace to go around the whole summer complaining about the weather, regretting my choice, dreaming about how good my summer would have been if I had left for that sunny place, knowing very well that I cannot choose differently?

I guess it all sums up to being with what is and not wasting energy on what could be unless we are willing to take the steps towards it. Make choices out of a clear mind, deal with the consequences or choose again, but avoid to be mentally and emotionally torn between this and that. Avoid cultivating feelings of regret and guilt and rather learn from the mistakes we make and correct our course. Stop living in fear of not making the best choice.

Short reflections

Published on by VanessaLeave a comment

The sweetest victories have been the ones won towards my limited mind.
During the last six months, I have worked on observing my negative thoughts to avoid falling back into old negative patterns of behaviour. When upset, disappointed or frustrated, I have allowed the feeling to come, sat with it, and avoid reacting to it. When I take the time to do so, I realise it is just a matter of the reality not meeting my expectations. I then kindly lead my mind to something else, and continue with my day. It has been so liberating no to engage with nor react to these emotions! The step two of this practice is to work with my way of perceiving myself and the world around me, I basically ask myself two questions: 1) Can I change my attitude towards this? 2) Is this so damaging that I have to move away?(at least mentally and emotionally).

I’d better have a clear mind in my interactions with the world.
If I do not know what I’m doing or why I am doing it, I can’t then act with conviction. I know that my clarity is not absolute, and today’s clarity will change into something else in some time, but I need to anchor myself into something, and that something can only be a product of the practice of reflection at any given moment.

The less we push, the further we get.
Less talk, more listening. Ask useful questions. Show the way towards change even if I don’t agree with that change. Oppose less but draw the line when necessary.

Every single day my kids and my students present me opportunities to be humble, I am learning to grasp them.
Be curious. Be open. Accept my mistakes and apologise. Remember the impact of my words and actions, preferably before I speak or act. Keep building. Avoid breaking. Rebuild when broken. Accept disagreement. Accept negative feedback and attitudes as part of the process. Accept that, like anyone else, I am not to be liked by everyone and that’s ok.

I am one and I am a part of all. I am here and I am beyond. I don’t need to be in opposition.
No need for explanation.

I see your pain, I am with you, but my emotional reaction to it won’t help you.
No need to add on my emotion to situations that already are emotionally difficult. I can show empathy and help without wasting energy in emotion that can be used to be skilful and practical.

It’s unfair!

Published on by VanessaLeave a comment

One thing that frustrates me to tears since I was a little girl is the feeling of being treated unfairly. I purposely say ‘the feeling of being treated unfairly’ because from what I observe in myself, it is often a matter of perception.

As a kid, I might have been scolded at for doing something I didn’t perceive as a fault but for the “scolding” adult, it was. I see that a lot as a teacher of young teenagers, when I correct a behaviour, my student(s) and I often move into a discussion about the unfairness of me pointing out at this action as inappropriate. This then leads to me explaining how the behaviour is against our school’s common agreements, or how it affects negatively the classroom/school’s environment, and the student in question seeing it as unfair because he/she wants or needs something different. There is a conflict between what the student in question wants or needs and what he/she can/should do at that given moment.

So, sometimes unfairness is a matter of perception, but what happens when we experience doing our best in something for then seeing it being taken away from us without clear reason? Some years ago, out of the blue, a friend that I considered as one of my closest friends, suddenly decided that she didn’t want me in her life anymore. When I asked for a reason to at least have the chance to apologise, my friend got even more angry and accused me of harassing her. We don’t live in the same country, so this made things even more difficult. I asked myself several times what was it that I did to be treated like this, and honestly, to the day today I really don’t know. In this friendship of so many years where we never ever had dispute, this really felt unfair.

After some days of reflecting, I decided that all I could do is to respect my friend’s decision. I sent her a message telling her that I love her and that I would be here in case she wanted to reestablish contact, and I let her go. From the yogic perspective, I went into this conflict with the intention to do my part to fix it, I measured my words and tried my best, her reaction to it was completely out of my hands. Why spend more time and energy thinking about the unfairness of the situation? Why make the situation even messier by engaging in negative thoughts and feelings when none of them would solve anything and just add distress for me?

If there is something I am more and more convinced of it’s the fact that even when it seems like people do things to us, it is all about their inner world. Why do I know this? Because I experience it myself. All my interactions with others and the world around me are a result of my way of perceiving myself and the outer world.

I guess at this point you are wondering if I mean that we should then just accept unfairness and let go. Not really, but like with everything, I think we do ourselves a favour when we peel off the layers of emotion in any given situation. I am not saying we shouldn’t experience emotion, but we should try to not feed into negativity and rather approach life in a practical way by seeking clarity in our mind.

I recently had the privilege to learn a big lesson from another friend. She lives abroad, has a child and is divorced. She was facing a trial about the custody of her child, and like in many trials, the lawyer in the opposing party had dug into her personal life to find aspects of her past and personality that could be presented in a bad light. It was very tough for her who has been taking good care of her child and taken every decision thinking of the child’s best, to be depicted in a completely wrong way. After the first emotion of unfairness and frustration had passed, she decided to stay calm throughout the whole process and not even respond to these accusations. She had prepared her case well, she had done all the right things for her child, and didn’t have anything to prove. She even had the compassion to understand the tactic, and let go of it in her mind. This, in my opinion is the big lesson for me to learn here. She let go for her own well-being. Thus, by letting go, she was able to stay calm in court, talk from reason, and go home with peace in her heart. She was, of course, nervous for the outcome but had the wisdom to see that she had done her part and the rest wasn’t in her hands.

This is the very principle of Karma Yoga. In her role as a mum, my friend did her duty by always acting with her child’s best interest in mind, she presented herself to trial well-prepared, the rest is not in her hands.

Does this mean that we shouldn’t fight when we perceive something as unfair? I don’t know for sure, but I think that we would benefit from asking ourselves what is it that we are fighting for and why are we fighting for it? What is required from us in that particular role? How much will this fight cost emotionally? What would happen if we let go?

This morning, I was reading verse 11 from ch2 in the Bhagavad Gita where Sri Krisna says to the warrior Arjuna “The wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead” which for me, in the context of spirituality, is a big statement. We don’t lament our losses, because they are losses in the transient world. The transient world is constantly changing and nothing that we acquire in it is really ours. What is even more important, no matter how much we loose ‘out there’, we don’t loose anything inside ourselves. Sometimes we even need to let go of something in order to learn a lesson, in order to be able to move on and win something that truly benefits us. If we are sure of our integrity, of our attitudes and our actions, no one can take that away from us. We can loose an unfair battle, but we can also rise tall, and move on to the next level.

It is interesting to use the Gita here, since it is a song about the dialogue between Arjuna and Krisna at the battlefield right before a big battle Arjuna needs to fight against, among other things, injustice. But I think the key here is to remember that Arjuna should engage in this fight following his duty as a warrior, and not driven by his own negative emotions…